The Saddle area is underlain by Lower to Middle Jurassic volcanic rock of the Hazelton Group. Rare exposures consist of very sheared quartz-sericite-pyrite altered rock. Some of these have relict textures suggestive of Hazelton rocks and some are reported to be more intrusive in appearance. Rocks are interpreted to be volcanic breccias and epiclastics with bedding-parallel mafic flows, including amygdaloidal and some pillow basalts.
Saddle South is cut by a prominent northwest-trending brittle fracture zone that affects the Hazelton rocks. It may be the cause of the shearing, fracturing & alteration encountered during drilling of the southern contact of the Saddle South monzonite. The mean orientation of the foliation is dipping 77 towards 222. The Saddle North zone is bounded to the NE by the SE-striking, steeply-dipping “Poelzer Fault”. Mineralization is terminated by this fault & abrupt changes in lithology & alteration occur across the fault.
The 2017 exploration program, testing gold-in-soil anomaly with the first-ever drilling in the Saddle area, resulted in the discovery of the epithermal gold system at Saddle South. It is hosted by hydrothermally altered volcanic fragmental and volcaniclastic rocks of the Upper Triassic Stuhini Group, cut by dikes primarily of latest Triassic and Early Jurassic age. Drilling defined a well-mineralized east-west trend of gold bearing sulphide-rich veins spanning roughly 400 metres along strike that is up to 150 metres across and is coincident with a moderate IP chargeability high and resistivity low. The 2017 drilling returned many high-grade intercepts (e.g., 51.53 grams per tonne gold over 6.95 metres in TTD007; 20.02 grams per tonne gold over 8.25 metres in TTD046), and the aim of the 2018 program at Saddle South was to further test the system along strike and to depth.
The Saddle gold anomalies appear as separate and subparallel west-northwest-trending anomalies covering at least 1.5 kilometres (Saddle South) and one kilometre (Saddle North MINFILE 104G 432) along trend.
Preliminary observations indicate that Saddle mineralization is associated with post-deformation, malachite-chalcopyrite bearing quartz-carbonate veins that are oriented roughly parallel to regional, dominant shearing directions. GT Gold’s geological mapping is reported to have encountered “completely quartz-sericite-pyrite altered rock with numerous outcrops of gossanous material” found to contain material gold and copper values. The Saddle South anomaly runs 1.5 kilometres in an east-west direction and contains an “irregular core” of gold-in-soil values as defined by contoured values exceeding 0.5 gram gold per tonne (Northern Miner, May 11, 2017).
Mineralization is thought to be of a transitional low sulphidation epithermal type. Higher-grade sections are characterized by the presence of decimetre-to-metre-scale quartz-carbonate semi-massive to massive sulphide veins and vein-breccias dominated by pyrite but also containing subordinate sphalerite, galena, chalcopyrite and probable sulphosalts. Closely associated are narrower millimetre-to-centimetre scale quartz-carbonate-pyrite and pyrite veins and veinlets; the former are commonly well-banded, multi-stage veins. Also, closely associated with all sulphide-rich vein styles present at Saddle are disseminations and somewhat coarser-grained irregular aggregates of pyrite that typically occur as metre-scale halos around the veins. This style of mineralization also appears to be gold-bearing. Core-logging indicates that the alteration associated directly with the veins and their pyritic halos includes carbonate, iron-rich chlorite, sericite, and silica, and beyond that, chlorite-iron carbonate alteration appears to flank the mineralized trend.
The mineralized zones appear to follow an east-west trending and moderately to steeply south-dipping structure, or structures, and this zone was also the locus for emplacement of a series of syn-to post-mineral felsic, intermediate and mafic dikes. Mineralization, dikes and the host structure cut the steeply-dipping host fragmental volcanic rocks, which are characterized by the presence of fine-grained hornblende and feldspar phenocrysts; the tuffaceous rocks have been mapped previously as part of the Lower to Middle Jurassic Hazelton Group. A deformational overprint also characterizes the host rocks, mineralization, and many of the dikes. The host rocks are of low metamorphic rank, but near mineralized zones they are commonly well-foliated. All the rocks, including the mineralization zones and the younger dikes, are cut by a variety of brittle faults and fractures, and by common, discontinuous and generally narrow late calcite veins. However, the mineralized zones are said to display good continuity.
Drilling in the 2018 season at Saddle South expanded both the depth extent and the strike length of the mineralizing system. Deep intercepts on the west (drill hole TTD079), and on the east (drill hole TTD069), have increased the size and expanded the exploration footprint, as have intercepts along strike to the west (e.g., TTD065, TTD068, TTD076),and to the east (e.g., TTD105, with 187.5 g/t Au over 0.74m). On the west margin of Saddle Ridge, and in all holes drilled west of the ridge and beneath the rock glacier in that direction, mineralized veins generally trend north-northeast (average strike 200) and dip moderately west-northwest (average 55 degrees). Veins oriented in this direction correspond with a more southerly trend of the system, toward an area across the rock glacier where 2018 soil and talus fines sampling yielded highly encouraging results for gold (see Press Release, September 4, 2018; figure 6). The drill holes collared from the rock glacier encountered less overburden than was expected (typically less than 30 metres), suggesting that the potential to the southwest may be readily tested.
GT Gold's 2019 Saddle drill hole TTD135 (one of four 2019 drill holes) intersected 53.73 metres at 10.00 grams per tonne gold, 46.84 grams per tonne silver (from 93.27 to 147.00 metres); including 35.73 metres at 13.45 grams per tonne gold, 68.01 grams per tonne silver (from 93.27 to 129.00 metres); including 15.02 metres at 24.90 grams per tonne gold, 114.20 grams per tonne silver (from 93.27 to 108.29 metres); including 6.73 metres at 31.69 grams per tonne gold, 92.89 grams per tonne silver (from 93.27 to 100.00 metres); including 3.29 metres at 27.52 grams per tonne gold, 142.24 grams per tonne silver (from 105.00 to 108.29 metres) (GT Gold Corp., News Release, January 16, 2020). By the end of the 2019 drill program, the mineralization delineated at the South Saddle defined a near-surface zone of at least 500 metres strike length, over 100 metres width, and which can be traced to more than 500 metres below surface.
WORK HISTORY.
In 2011 and 2012, New Chris Minerals Ltd. conducted an airborne magnetic and transient electromagnetic (“TEM") airborne survey over the bulk of the property, including over the Saddle showings area, involving approximately 8,100 line-kilometres, with approximately 45 per cent of this flown area covered by an airborne radiometric survey.
In 2013 New Chris Minerals Ltd completed a reconnaissance survey collecting 879 soil samples in the Saddle valley along lines spaced approximately 400 metres apart, with 50 metres between sample sites. In 2014, an in-fill sampling program (939 samples) was undertaken over the anomalous area delimited in 2013 with line spacing ranging from 50 to 100 metres, and sample spacing ranging from 25 to 50 metres. The results from soil sampling in the Saddle target area show two coherent areas highly anomalous (defined as exceeding 0.1 gram per tonne) in gold: the Northern Gold anomaly (Saddle North MINFILE 104G 432) and the Southern Gold (Saddle South) anomaly. Concurrent with geological mapping 62 rock samples were collected for mapping purposes and analysis in 2013 from the Saddle area, followed by 66 rock samples in 2014.
In 2016, GT Gold Corp reported that: 1) 58 soil samples from a 25 by 25 metre soil sampling program over Saddle South, fell within the plus 500 parts per billion (0.5 gram per tonne) gold contour; 2) the average value in soils of these 58 samples was 7.43 grams per tonne; 3) the median soil assay fell between 1.61 and 1.80 grams per tonne gold; 4) 33 of 58 samples (57 per cent) yielded assays greater than 1 gram per tonne gold and; 5) 11 of the 58 samples (19 per cent) yielded assays greater than 10 grams per tonne gold with highs to 72.3 grams per tonne (Press Release, GT Gold Corp Dec 13, 2016 www.gtgoldcorp.ca).
On June 30, 2016, Manera Capital Corp. (“Manera”) entered into an agreement to acquire New Chris Minerals Ltd. (the “NCM Agreement”). Pursuant to the NCM Agreement, Manera agreed to acquire 100 per cent of the issued and outstanding shares of NCM, making NCM a wholly-owned subsidiary of Manera. Following the concurrent closing of the New Chris Acquisition, the Greig Acquisition and the Manera Financing the resulting entity proposes to change its name to “GT Gold Corp.”
In 2017, multiple intercepts of high-grade gold plus/minus silver were obtained from six of the first eight core holes ever drilled into the new Saddle South gold discovery of GT Gold, including an intercept of 51.53 grams per tonne gold and 117.38 grams per tonne silver over 6.95 metres (TTD007), and the first visible gold has been observed in core at 109 metres in TTD031 (Press Release, GT Gold Corp, August 31, 2017). All core holes drilled into the Saddle target area to August 31, 2017, now totaling 36 including step-outs and step-backs, have shown intercepts of Saddle-style mineralization, pending assay results of 26 holes.
In 2018, GT Gold Corp. released additional assay results from the summer 2017 drill program at the Saddle gold-silver discovery. Reconnaissance holes TTD059 and TTD061 were drilled 300 and 500 metres, respectively, to the east of previous drilling and were designed to test geochemical and induced polarization anomalies on the eastern slopes of Saddle South ridge and the adjacent area. To the west, stepout hole TTD051, drilled due south from a set-up 190 metres west of previous drilling, tested for mineralization beneath thick glacial cover in the valley west and south of where most of the Saddle South drilling was undertaken. Hole TTD059 graded 12.12 grams per tonne gold over 5.83 metres from 129.00 metres; including 20.34 grams per tonne gold over 3.33 metres from 131.50 metres (estimated true width: 80 per cent) (Press Release, GT Gold Corp. January 9, 2018). TTD058 was one of four holes (TTD054, 056, 058, 060) drilled north at varying dips from the same pad, which targeted below visible gossan on the west slope of Saddle South ridge. All four holes achieved multiple high-grade intercepts. Hole TTD058, which achieved a very high-grade silver intercept accompanied by high-grade gold: 31.79 grams per tonne gold and 1,141.10 grams per tonne silver over 3.01 metres from 41.17 metres (true widths unknown) (Press Release, GT Gold Corp. January 9, 2018).
Drilling in 2018 by GT started in June. Early results included an intersection of high-grade gold in step out drilling both to the east and west of its 2017 Saddle South gold discovery and, additionally, the discovery of a new and deeper high-grade trend to the south (hole TTD069). On August 8th, 2018, GT Gold reported that they had extended the Saddle South Zone (the “Main Trend”) both west and east by approximately 400 metres from the area drilled in the 2017 discovery holes. Saddle South was reported to now encompasses high-grade intercepts along more than a kilometer of strike length. Also, hole TTD069 intersected high-grade mineralization 650 metres below surface in what appears to be a new sub-parallel mineralized trend south and east of the main area of 2017 Saddle South drilling.
In 2019, drilling by GT Gold on the Saddle South amounted to a total of 4 holes. The mineralization delineated defines a near-surface zone of at least 500 metres strike length, over 100 metres width, and which can be traced to more than 500 metres below surface. The relatively well-constrained central and western parts of the Saddle South zone are part of the larger but less well-defined Saddle South system that strikes a further 600 to 700 metres eastward, for a total strike length of well over a kilometre. The Saddle South zone remains open at depth, to the east, and to the west, where it appeared to change to a southerly trend.
See Saddle North (104G 432) for related information information.
